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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26725714">major triad</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcalling/pseuds/nightcalling'>nightcalling</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Julie and The Phantoms (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, brief allusion to past Alex/Luke, brief mention of Alex/Willie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:54:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,161</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26725714</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcalling/pseuds/nightcalling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dude, that girl has the voice of an angel and she can make us visible,” Reggie tells Luke. “Without her, we’re just, like, elevator music.” Despite the look of offense that Luke gives him afterward, Reggie knows that Luke knows it, the same way he knows that the I-IV-V chord progression in C major goes C-F-G.</p><p>What Luke doesn’t know is that Reggie had actually meant to say, “That girl has the voice of an angel, just like you, and the magic that happens when you harmonize is something I wish music theory had a name for.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Julie Molina/Luke Patterson/Reggie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>393</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>major triad</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I love both Julie/Luke and Luke/Reggie. Then, after thinking about it a bit more, I decided that what I wanted most of all was for all three of them to date, and thus this was born.</p><p>Edit: The first time around, I forgot that Attack of the Clones was released after the boys ate that hot dog (shame on me because Reggie had a whole scene where he complained about this, smh), so I changed an overt reference I had made to the film to a more subtle one because I wanted to keep part of the original line in the fic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This is what Reggie knows to be a fact: smiles are sunshine personified. He’s been sure of it ever since Suzie Grey, who came to school every day in second grade with her yellow backpack decorated with glitter and butterflies. Reggie hadn’t been assigned to the same island of four desks as hers, but that hadn’t stopped him from asking her during recess, why butterflies?</p><p>“Every caterpillar grows up to be a pretty butterfly,” Suzie had explained.</p><p>“Even though they’re weird and ugly when they’re babies?” Reggie had asked.</p><p>Suzie had smiled at him with the wattage of a thousand suns, never mind that she had been made fun of for missing two front teeth.</p><p>“The ugliest ones become the prettiest ones,” she had said.</p><p>It had been that gap between Suzie’s teeth that had convinced Reggie to shoot her back a return smile, his own crooked teeth be darned. Suzie Grey, with her bright blue eyes and even brighter smile, could light up the sky on the darkest of days.</p><p>Yes, he was already a banger lyricist at eight years old, please hold your applause.</p><p>Here’s another fact: to be compassionate is to be a force of good. He learned what that meant in fifth grade after he had waited ten minutes, then twenty, then thirty on the bench by the curb and watched every other kid be picked up after school. By the time it had reached forty minutes, he’d decided he might as well begin the trek back home if he wanted to make it home in time for dinner.</p><p>Lily Wang had been the class president that year, winning the votes in September by a landslide, but Reggie hadn’t actually held a conversation with her until she had tapped his shoulder that day.</p><p>“Do you need a ride?” Lily had asked.</p><p>Reggie had peered at the black SUV Lily had been pointing at. “Do you know where I live?”</p><p>“No, but you can tell me and I’ll tell my mom,” she had said. “She’s good with directions.”</p><p>It had been sunny when the bell rang at 3 pm, but clouds had slowly drifted over to the patch of sky above the school in the interim—a tell-tale sign that it had been about to rain.</p><p>“Okay,” Reggie had said. “Thanks.”</p><p>On the way, they’d passed a Burger King and Mrs. Wang had bought them each a shake, strawberry for him, vanilla for Lily. Crawling through the drive-thru had taken longer than the actual ride home, but he’d gained a new favorite flavor and a new friend out of it, so he’d ended up being the winner in this scenario. Take that, rain.</p><p>A third fact: believing in one’s dreams makes one unstoppable. Despite being born and raised next to a beach in sunny LA, Reggie had never taken to surfing. The ocean is pretty and all, but he prefers his salt in his food and out of the water. The occasional sandcastle can be fun, but on a day when he’s in a bad mood, sand is coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere, so that’s only a 50/50 chance of him enjoying himself.</p><p>Even so, in seventh grade, he had watched Nell Thompson take her surfboard across that sandy beach and go against the tide every Saturday. Come hell or high water, rain or shine, she’d be there, facing the waves.</p><p>Now, Reggie had been the furthest thing from an expert, but even he had been able to tell that Nell hadn’t been anywhere close to being a good surfer. She would’ve been lucky to land one out of ten waves on a good day. Regardless, there had been something admirable about the way Nell had tightened her ponytail, stretched out her limbs, cracked her neck, and forged onward even as she had kept being knocked down again and again and again.</p><p>Reggie had asked Nell once, while she had been catching her breath on a log, “Is that fun?”</p><p>Nell had peered up at him, one eye closed, the other fighting against the wind billowing in her face, and nodded at his guitar.</p><p>“Is that fun?” she had asked, brushing off the seaweed wrapped around her arms and getting up to tackle her eleventh wave of the day.</p><p>Smiles that are sunshine personified, compassion rooted in goodness, believing in one’s dreams—those had been the most important things Reggie had learned by the time he had become a legal teenager. They’re all wonderful traits that someone would be lucky to have one of, let alone all three of them. If such a person existed, they’d probably be a unicorn or something, a legendary creature that only resides in fairytales and myths.</p><p> </p><p>Turns out, Luke Patterson is one of those unicorns.</p><p>At first, Reggie thinks it’s a fluke when he meets the guy on the first day of high school, five minutes into orientation and already overwhelmed by the vastness of the campus compared to junior high. Luke is standing next to him in the welcome assembly, decked out in an orange beanie, a faded sleeveless graphic tee, and destroyed blue jeans, looking every bit like the kind of person who already has a million ideas inside his head with not enough time to implement them.</p><p>In the middle of the principal’s speech, Reggie nudges Luke and whispers, “So, high school, huh? Lots of hot girls, am I right?” because they’re definitely standing near a bunch of hot girls, and hot girls are what you talk about with other dudes when you’re finally in high school.</p><p>Luke grins at him, laughs a little laugh, and Reggie freezes right then and there as Luke replies, “Yeah.”</p><p>No further elaboration. Just, ‘yeah.’</p><p>Maybe his hormones are going out of whack (hormones tend to do that when you’re fifteen), but Reggie swears he isn’t imagining the heat flooding his own cheeks. By the time the principal finishes his speech, Reggie has come to the conclusion that his ability to read people is probably leading him astray. Growing up in a house with people who try to hide everything behind shouts has warped his sense of what to treat literally versus figuratively, and above all, has turned the English language into a guessing game.</p><p>He’s gotten good at the game over years of practice, but he can be the top scorer and still be wrong, right? He had been wrong about his parents getting their act together and learning to love each other again. Who’s to say he wasn’t wrong about this?</p><p>So, that’s where he’s at right now. He shakes off every instance of Luke tickling his insides with his dopey smile. He brushes off every warm imprint that Luke leaves on his skin, whether it’s from Luke patting his back after a smooth rehearsal or from Luke reassuring him on some of the rougher days that everything’s going to be okay. He drowns out every syllable of Luke insisting to him and Alex that <em>guys, we’re going to play the Orpheum if it’s the last thing we’ll ever do</em>. He puts out every fire that Luke lights inside of him, every spark that makes him want to fly, never mind that he hasn’t felt this alive since—well, ever.</p><p>It’s dang hard to resist because this is <em>Luke Patterson</em>, lead singer of Sunset Curve, a boy who has carpe diem’ed the most out of everybody Reggie has ever met. Luke’s power lies in his refusal to take no for an answer, and that’s why Reggie is even here in the first place, being unable to say no to Luke.</p><p>But Reggie has his own skill set too, and if there’s something he’s better at than writing kickass music, it’s shutting his mouth when there aren’t any foreseeable benefits of speaking his mind. He’d learned his lesson with his parents, and he isn’t going to make the same mistake here, with his family that actually matters. He and Luke and Alex are as tight as it gets between friends, and he’s not throwing it away for a silly infatuation.</p><p>When they finally land the gig at the Orpheum, he thinks, this is it. This is what they’ve been working so hard for every day of their short lives, and when they ace their soundcheck, he knows, just <em>knows</em> that this is the night that’s going to change their lives forever.</p><p> </p><p>Well, he wasn’t wrong. Their lives certainly take a massive turn, but it’s not exactly the turn he had been expecting.</p><p>He certainly doesn’t expect to meet Julie Molina. Julie Molina, who he’s come to learn, day after day of spending time with her, that she is also sunshine personified, a compassionate force of good, and the definition of unstoppable.</p><p>“Dude, that girl has the voice of an angel and she can make us visible,” Reggie tells Luke. “Without her, we’re just, like, elevator music.” Despite the look of offense that Luke gives him afterward, Reggie knows that Luke knows it, the same way he knows that the I-IV-V chord progression in C major goes C-F-G.</p><p>What Luke doesn’t know is that Reggie had actually meant to say, “That girl has the voice of an angel, just like you, and the magic that happens when you harmonize is something I wish music theory had a name for.”</p><p>Because the truth is, every time that Julie and Luke sing together onstage, Reggie is hit with a little something, right there below his heart, and it’s not indigestion because he knows what indigestion feels like. He ate a bad hot dog once, okay? Indigestion and this <em>little something</em> can be quite similar, he understands how people can mix them up, but he has had experience with both and he can definitely provide many shreds of evidence for why what he’s feeling is the latter and not the former.</p><p>There’s the heart flutter, the jitter in his step, the lightness of his breaths—did he mention the heart flutter? Those aren’t common symptoms of indigestion, as far as he knows.</p><p>And, well, Julie and Luke… are <em>Julie and Luke</em>. Julie is adorable, Luke is adorable, they’re adorable together. Makes sense. It’s like when you have one cute puppy in a room, a second cute puppy in another room, and then you put the puppies in the same room and everyone loses their freaking minds. He’s seen those so-called ‘YouTube videos’ that Carlos shows Ray from time to time. He knows what he’s talking about.</p><p>Still, not to be a broken record or anything, but he’s been wrong before, so he waits in the wings and watches the two of them. Watches Luke direct those big dole eyes at Julie anytime she does anything (understandable), watches Julie stare longingly at Luke’s back when Luke isn’t paying attention (also understandable), watches the two of them grow closer with every practice run and every gig they book (very understandable).</p><p>After Julie and Luke share the microphone for the second or third time, Reggie wonders—is the sparkle in their eyes the same sparkle he has in his own eyes whenever he’s riffing alongside them or singing his heart out? If so, then he really needs to check himself because it’s not going to be long before one or both of them call his bluff.</p><p>He finally comes to terms with it when Julie saunters up to him onstage the Orpheum, and her dazzling smile gives him the same fuzzy feeling that he’d gotten when Luke had sauntered up to him just a few days before in the garage, pressing those calloused fingers to his lips.</p><p>He <em>really</em> comes to terms with it when Julie and Luke fall into each other’s embrace after the show. They’re both wrought with disbelief and happiness and above all, <em>love</em>, and there’s so much affection on display that he tears up even more from the adoration leaking out of his heart. It’s a good thing that he has a reason to be crying in the first place because the next thing he knows, they’re all hugging. Alex and Julie and Luke feel like home under his touch, but it’s the weight of Julie’s soft curls to his left, Luke’s firm shoulders to his right, that makes him wonder if this is where he was always meant to end up.</p><p>So, yeah. Th<em>e little something</em> inside his chest? It’s definitely not indigestion.</p><p>Is it even possible? Liking two people at the same time? Is there a book about this? A flyer? A brochure? <em>A demo track?</em> There has to be somebody out there who’s recorded a song about this before. There’s no way he’s the first person to feel this conflict, but he wouldn’t even know where to begin searching.</p><p>He can sense Alex directing sideward glances at him from time to time because Alex is that guy who always senses when something’s wrong but is never sure if he should bring it up because he’d be overstepping. Alex also keeps sending Reggie rueful smiles, sort of like the way Alex looks around Willie, or back when Alex had thought his crush on Luke had been unrequited, pre-ghost.</p><p>Dang, what is it about Luke that has everybody in this band falling for him left and right? Reggie muses, faintly, if Alex would’ve ended up liking Julie too if he wasn’t strictly into guys. He can’t imagine anybody not falling for this bright star of a girl, assuming girls were on the table to begin with.</p><p>What had he done in the past if he hadn’t been able to think his way through a problem? Jokes aren’t going to work here. He should probably let it go, let Julie and Luke have their thing because they’re clearly meant to be, but his heart keeps pulling his body towards them like the inevitable slide of his guitar strings falling into tune.</p><p>Julie and Luke make him want to be in tune.</p><p>Does that metaphor even make sense? Jeez. He’s getting rusty with the poetic language.</p><p>Speaking of poetic language, maybe he should try writing a song. Music is the universal language, yada yada yada, right? He can write down the song and try to translate that <em>little something</em> into words and bury it inside the lyrics. Then, he’ll lock the song away in his proverbial notebook along with the other songs he’d written in the past and leave it at that.</p><p>Yeah. That’s probably for the best.</p><p> </p><p>Reggie chooses to exorcise his feelings on a day when Alex is ‘not on a date, not at all, no way’ with Willie, and Julie and Luke are ‘not on a date, not at all, no way’ and settles into a rhythm with his guitar. He’s plucking away at a few chords, getting rather into it, when Julie appears out of nowhere.</p><p>“Oh no, did you die too?” Reggie shrieks, nearly kicking over Alex’s drum set.</p><p>Julie furrows her eyebrows. “What? No. Why would you even think that?”</p><p>“Because you interrupted my groove! Thought you’d—” Reggie mimics a mini-explosion with his hand. “You know, poofed in.”</p><p>“Dude, you’re the one with your head in the clouds,” Luke says. He takes off his beanie and launches it at Reggie’s head. “Julie and I walked in like normal people.”</p><p>“This,” Reggie says, sidestepping the beanie and gesturing between Luke and himself, “this situation, this ghost thing, this is not normal. Now, Julie—” he tilts the neck of his bass at Julie, “Julie’s normal.”</p><p>“Thanks?” Julie says.</p><p>Luke crosses his arms. “Don’t encourage him. Next thing you know, he’ll be—” he cuts off, eyeing Reggie’s guitar and the miscellaneous chords that are scribbled all over the piece of paper lying on the table. “Actually, what <em>are</em> you doing?”</p><p>“Nothing.” Reggie casually walks forward to block the table from view, making sure to time his steps so that it doesn’t look like he has anything to hide. “Aren’t you two supposed to be, uh. Taking a stroll?”</p><p>Luke scrunches his nose. “A stroll? What are you, fifty?”</p><p>“Luke,” Julie whispers, pulling on the hem of Luke’s shirt, “focus.”</p><p>“Right.” Luke clears his throat. “Reggie.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“We, uh, we want to play a song for you,” Luke says, looking to Julie, who just keeps nodding her head in Reggie’s direction and widening her eyes every so often. “We wrote it together.”</p><p>Reggie straightens his back slowly. “Uh, okay. Alex isn’t back though, shouldn’t we—”</p><p>“No!” Luke exclaims. “Um, I mean, we can show him later. If he wants. But this is a song that Julie and I wrote.”</p><p>“For you,” Julie clarifies.</p><p>Reggie looks between the two of them. “What’d I do now?”</p><p>Luke shakes his head and laughs lightly. “Nothing, man, just—”</p><p>“Just take a seat and we’ll show you, okay?” Julie says, maneuvering Reggie to the couch and plopping him down onto the cushions. He’s still getting used to the whole ‘Julie can touch them now’ plot twist, but he goes without a fight because Julie and Luke are both being too weird, even by his standards.</p><p>Julie settles down behind her piano while Luke slings his guitar over his shoulders, ducking his head to tune his strings. Before their soundcheck at the Orpheum, before their concert that never was, Luke had on this very specific look of determination—and he’s looking at Reggie now with the same expression.</p><p>“So serious,” Reggie says with a nervous laugh. “You know that every song goes through many crappy iterations before reaching its final form, right? No big deal.”</p><p>“Right,” Luke says, but his expression doesn’t break.</p><p>Reggie swallows and looks at Julie, but all she does is smile before placing her hands over the piano keys and nodding at Luke.</p><p>“Right,” Luke says again. “So, this is a work in progress, but I—we hope…”</p><p>“We hope you like it,” Julie says.</p><p>Reggie clutches the neck of his own bass guitar, feeling the strings dig into his skin when Luke strums a simple C major chord in the open position, perfectly timed to Julie’s accompanying G major chord.</p><p>After the chords peter out, Julie continues running her fingers over the keys, setting a basic repeating melody in 4/4. Five measures later, Luke takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p><em>Your ocean green eyes,<br/>They ebb and flow like the tide,<br/>Rushing to cover up the lies,<br/>But not enough to hide<br/>All the tears that you cry</em>.</p>
</blockquote><p>Luke picks up the melody on his guitar when Julie finishes her run on the piano and waits for five measures herself before singing.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Your wide, dimpled smile,<br/>It’s soft and fierce like the sun,<br/>Lighting your orbit by a mile,<br/>But you’re the only one<br/>Thinking it’s not worthwhile.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Julie adds her piano back in, joining Luke’s guitar for the instrumental run up to the chorus. Luke bumps his voice an octave down as Julie goes an octave up.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>You say that times change,<br/>Nothing we can do about that.<br/>But honey, I’ll pack up my bags,<br/>Even hang up my hat,<br/>Let that be the end of that,<br/>So I can restart this journey with you.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>You say we’re a team,<br/>But honey, why are you so sad?<br/>Well, here I am now, voice raised and<br/>Amidst the sunset glow.<br/>Won’t you defy time with me?<br/>Won’t you be my sundial, be my constant?</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Julie and Luke stop singing, so Reggie figures that’s the end, but he’s not actually thinking about that because he’s currently dealing with the pounding inside his chest, the twist inside his stomach. This song is different from Sunset Curve’s and The Phantoms’ typical repertoires—not that they don’t do ballads, but they rarely go full acoustic. Maybe they’ll have a part for Alex and Reggie himself for the final arrangement after they dress it up a little, but those simple chords and arpeggios are bouncing around in Reggie’s memory, and he thinks, briefly, that it would be a shame to taint the sound with anything else.</p><p>Luke wipes his forehead even though they’re ghosts and they don’t sweat anymore, and shoots Julie a smile, the kind he gives people whenever he thinks they’ve aced something.</p><p>Reggie grips harder at his bass guitar in an attempt to ground himself back down to Earth, but Julie and Luke are up there in the stars, and it’s tempting to want to follow their trajectory.</p><p>“That was… wow,” Reggie says because saying anything else would be too dangerous.</p><p>“Wow is good,” Julie says, walking around the piano and parking herself next to Luke.</p><p>“It is,” Luke says. He turns to Reggie eagerly. “Anything else?”</p><p>“It’s, um.” Reggie puts on a smile and nods his head, shaking it emphatically. “Yeah, it’s great. Really great.”</p><p>Luke visibly deflates. “Just great?”</p><p>What does Luke want to hear? Something about the composition, maybe?</p><p>“When you lowered your voice and Julie raised hers?” Reggie adds. “Harmonizing heaven. Julie, I know I’ve said this a million times, but you really do shred on the piano.”</p><p>Julie grins, but it’s a hesitant one, not at all the way she usually looks after an incredible performance. “Thanks.”</p><p>“I agree, Julie’s amazing, but—” Luke wrings his hands together and twirls his guitar. “What else?”</p><p>What else? What else?</p><p>“It’s romantic?” Reggie tries.</p><p>Luke nods rapidly, inching forward. “Yeah? And?”</p><p>“Dude, you’re really fishing for compliments today,” Reggie says. Even on their best days, Luke isn’t usually this pushy.</p><p>“No, I mean…” Luke starts shaking his leg. He only does that when he’s nervous. Why would Luke be nervous?</p><p>“Are you okay?” Reggie asks.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Luke says. “But what’s—what’s your answer?”</p><p>Reggie blinks. “To what?”</p><p>Julie tilts her head at him and gives him a smile, kind of like the smile she’d directed at him when he’d suggested putting out a country album.</p><p>“Reggie,” she says gently, “we’re asking you out.”</p><p>Now, contrary to popular belief, Reggie isn’t clueless, okay? A little dense sometimes, and maybe things fly over his head more often than not, but just to remind everyone so they’re all on the same page, he’s not entirely inept at the intricacies of human communication. He knows what Julie means.</p><p>“Where are we going?” Reggie asks anyway because maybe Julie is the one who doesn’t know what she means, and because it’s an out that’s offered to him thanks to the vagueness of the English language.</p><p>Luke looks like he’s about to erupt out of frustration, but Julie laces her fingers with Luke’s and Luke goes silent.</p><p>“Anywhere you want to go with us,” Julie says. She holds out her other hand, palm open and up.</p><p>Luke lets go of his guitar and wraps his other hand underneath Julie’s outstretched one. They’re both offering Reggie the same thing that he wants, he thinks, but he hasn’t thought beyond hypotheticals, hasn’t even entertained it. What happens after the hypothetical becomes reality? Where do they go from there?</p><p>“What if I’m not sure where I want to go yet?” Reggie asks.</p><p>“We’ll figure it out together,” Julie says.</p><p>She and Luke continue to stand there patiently, just—waiting. People rarely do that anymore, do they? Wait for other people to catch up, that is.</p><p>Reggie is used to the waiting game.</p><p>“What if you change your mind?” Reggie asks in a quieter voice.</p><p>“We won’t,” Luke says. “But if it does happen, we’ll also figure it out together.”</p><p>Together, huh? That’s certainly better than trying to figure it out by himself.</p><p>Reggie places his right hand over both Julie’s, and Luke circles his own hand around to rest on top of Reggie’s, completing the triad.</p><p>“You’re like two puppies in a room,” Reggie blurts out.</p><p>Julie rolls her eyes and tugs on his wrist, pulling his body to where his heart already is. They forget about the guitars until they clang upon contact and send a dissonant chord ringing throughout the garage.</p><p>“Ow,” Luke says, squeezing his eyes shut. “That’s rough.”</p><p>“Yeah, I probably should’ve thought this hug out more before going for it,” Julie admits.</p><p>Reggie laughs, heart fluttering, hand warm.</p><p> </p><p>Alex poofs in a few minutes later and eyes them all cuddling on the couch, Reggie lying in Luke’s lap and Julie on the ground with her head leaning against Reggie’s legs.</p><p>“Oh, good,” Alex says. “I can finally tell Willie to stop pestering me about updates.”</p><p>“Don’t be jealous, dude,” Reggie says, opening his arms generously. “Get in here.”</p><p>“I’m not jealous,” Alex says, but he smiles and skips over, tumbling onto all three of them.</p><p>After ten seconds of silence, Reggie sits up with a gasp, knocking Alex and Julie off-balance.</p><p>“Guys.” Reggie widens his eyes. “Does this mean I get to call Ray ‘Dad’?”</p><p>Julie throws a pillow at his head.</p><p>“Reg,” Alex says, sighing.</p><p>“Dude,” Luke says. “One step at a time.”</p><p>Reggie shrugs. Okay. That’s fair.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for sticking around ‘til the end!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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